We study whether people became less likely to switch Medicare prescription drug plans (PDPs) due to more options and more time in Part D. Panel data for a random 20 percent sample of enrollees from 2006--2010 show that 50 percent were not in their original PDPs by 2010. Individuals switched PDPs in response to higher costs of their status quo plans, saving them money. Contrary to choice overload, larger choice sets increased switching unless the additional plans were relatively expensive. Neither switching overall nor responsiveness to costs declined over time, and above-minimum spending in 2010 remained below the 2006 and 2007 levels.

We investigate the relationship between political networks, weak institutions, and election fraud during the 2010 parliamentary election in Afghanistan combining: (i) data on political connections between candidates and election officials; (ii) a nationwide controlled evaluation of a novel monitoring technology; and (iii) direct measurements of aggregation fraud. We find considerable evidence of aggregation fraud in favor of connected candidates and that the announcement of a new monitoring technology reduced theft of election materials by about 60 percent and vote counts for connected candidates by about 25 percent. The results have implications for electoral competition and are potentially actionable for policymakers.

The optimal allocation of resources in complex environments—like allocation of dynamic wireless spectrum, cloud computing services, and Internet advertising—is computationally challenging even given the true preferences of the participants. In the theory and practice of optimization in complex environments, a wide variety of special and general purpose algorithms have been developed; these algorithms produce outcomes that are satisfactory but not generally optimal or incentive compatible. This paper develops a very simple approach for converting any, potentially non-optimal, algorithm for optimization given the true participant preferences, into a Bayesian incentive compatible mechanism that weakly improves social welfare and revenue.

Following FCC pressure to end bill shock, cellular carriers now alert customers when they exceed usage allowances. We estimate a model of plan choice, usage, and learning using a 2002–2004 panel of cellular bills. Accounting for firm price adjustment, we predict that implementing alerts in 2002–2004 would have lowered average annual consumer welfare by $33. We show that consumers are inattentive to past usage, meaning that bill-shock alerts are informative. Additionally, our estimates imply that consumers are overconfident, underestimating the variance of future calling. Overconfidence costs consumers $76 annually at 2002–2004 prices. Absent overconfidence, alerts would have little to no effect.